LONDON — British public TV network Channel 4 aired last night the first episode of “Adult Material,” a new dramatic series supposedly based on the local porn world. The show was written by playwright Lucy Kirkwood and had been in production for at least two years.
The official logline for the debut episode is “porn star and mum-of-three Jolene Dollar is a poster girl for the industry. But her world is shaken by the arrival on set of new girl Amy and the return of a dark figure from her past.”
Since Channel 4 and the show’s main cheerleader, the consistently anti-porn liberal publication The Guardian, refer to Jolene Dollar as a “top porn star,” XBIZ deputized one of the U.K.’s top adult stars, Tina Kay, to watch the debut episode and report back on how “Adult Material” depicts the world she knows in the most intimate ways.
Her verdict? “Complete bullshit, the whole thing.”
Industry Fairy Tales
“I don’t understand why, here in the U.K., they insist in talking about porn and making shows like this by hiring people who don’t know anything about it,” Kay — the 2020 XBIZ Europa winner for Female Foreign Performer of the Year — said via a transatlantic phone call only hours after the “Adult Material" premiere.
“Why are they making these fairy tales about our industry?” she added.
According to Kay, there hasn’t been a single documentary or fiction show in the U.K. about the adult industry that paints an accurate, non-distorted picture.
“Is the media getting paid for painting our industry negatively?” Kay asked. “Why don’t they ever ask any of the many successful people in the industry? Maybe they don’t wanna know the answers to their questions?”
“Channel 4 could have easily asked someone like me to consult, an actual top performer like their character is supposed to be,” she said. “But they don’t dare. Because if they showed me this script, or even their sets and costumes, I would eat them alive.”
Completely Out of Touch
Kay said she pressed play on the Channel 4 app with an open mind, but the cringing began after a minute and 30 seconds of Jolene Dollar’s misadventures — and it never stopped until the end credits. “It was constant. There was always something else cringy as soon as I recovered from the last head-shaker,” Kay told XBIZ.
“The moment Jolene arrives on set, everything is totally off from the reality I know. Everything was so old school — and this is a show supposedly set [in the present day]. It’s completely out of touch with what’s happening.”
Kay was particularly unimpressed by a weird producer and director played by Rupert Everett, who seemed like a badly costumed extra from “Boogie Nights,” a movie that was already anachronistic when it was made over 20 years ago.
“A producer hanging around in his golden coat and slippers acting like he’s at the Playboy mansion?” mocked Kay. “Where did they get that?”
A director in the 2020 adult industry, she pointed out, “looks normal, like a normal person. Unless she looks like me!” said Kay, a recent XBIZ Europa Awards Best Director nominee.
“Everyone on the sets I’ve been on and that I’ve run are creative people with a passion,” Kay said, adding that the total lack of joy, or humor, or focus and professionalism that Channel 4 and Lucy Kirkwood chose to portray was particularly offensive for people who take their job as seriously as she does.
“Everything out of these characters’ mouths is hateful,” Kay added. “What kind of idiot or monster tells a new girl you’re supposed to work with ‘Oh, you will be done in six months,’ as soon as you meet them? When a new girl arrives, you try to empower them. And you try to work as a team together. It’s completely the opposite.”
The SWERF Party Line
The general idea hammered by “Adult Content,” Kay pointed out, is that none of these performers are in control of their careers, or their lives. That supposed helplessness is one of the main battle cries of Sex Worker Exclusionary Feminists (SWERFs), who are regularly platformed by outlets like The Guardian and Channel 4.
“Again, this is complete, stigmatizing bullshit,” she said. “We have choice.”
The most awful thing for Kay was the appearance, late in the episode, of an American male performer with a tattoo on his neck that says “pain.”
A rapey, out-of-control, drugged-out performer would never be allowed near a professional set on either side of the Atlantic, Kay observed. "That was the moment I was ready to turn it off,” she said. “It was beyond ridiculous.”
The show's use of the cardboard stereotype of a "Porn Monster," Kay observed, to mock the compliance dialogue that companies film before and after shooting a scene to establish that its performers were not incapacitated or coerced.
Spoiler alert: the drugged-out performer supposedly representing The Big Bad American Porn Industry turns into a major plot point, but suffice it to say that on-set murders or manslaughters are not the norm on any adult industry set.
Talk to the Pros
When asked for any positive notes, Kay singled out a joke in the episode when the characters marveled at a rare male talent “who doesn’t inject” his penis.
"I laughed,” Kay told XBIZ. “At least they are aware that nowadays most guys in Europe inject. They should have asked the person who told them [about injecting] about how we get paid, because they kept showing shady envelopes full of cash and we’ve all been getting bank transfers for a while.”
Ultimately, Kay faulted the showrunners for “not showing any aspect of the sex workers’ lives as positive: they have a horrible life on set and they have a horrible life at home. It’s awful everywhere.”
“I understand that they have to have drama, but having this constant tragedy, plus all the mistakes about the setting and the characters, ended up making the whole situation unbelievable," she said.
“It was perfectly clear to me that nobody talked to anyone shooting porn right now,” Kay concluded.
“I would like to invite the director on my set and show him how I direct, how I perform and how I run my business. I’m going to purchase my third property and I have savings from porn. I can make a documentary about how fucking good my life is.”
